Advanced Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration

This course covers using DSC in advanced scenarios, such as setting up and using a pull server. It is assumed the viewer has basic DSC and PowerShell knowledge or has viewed the DSC Fundamentals course.

Course info

Rating

(41)

Level

Advanced

Updated

Mar 13, 2015

Duration

3h 9m

Description

The purpose of this course is to provide advanced coverage of PowerShell Desired State Configuration. The material in this course is what IT Pros who want to use DSC in their environments will be using in production. We'll look at how to build and use a pull server, including deploying resources. We'll also explore how to use certificates to create a secure DSC environment. The course will wrap up with walkthroughs of using DSC to configure Windows and Linux servers. This course will focus on DSC as it exists in PowerShell 4.0.

About the author

Jeffery Hicks is a Microsoft MVP in Windows PowerShell and an IT veteran with many years of experience, much of it spent as an IT consultant specializing in Microsoft server technologies with an emphasis in automation and efficiency.

Section Introduction Transcripts

Advanced DSC ConfigurationsHello, and welcome to my new Pluralsight course Advanced Windows PowerShell Desired State Configuration. My name is Jeff Hicks, and I will be your tour guide through this very interesting and I think very useful addition to Windows PowerShell and what we need as IT pros to manage our Windows environment. This lesson is entitled Advanced DSC Configurations. We will look at some advanced features and kind of lay the groundwork for other things we'll be doing throughout the course. So let me officially welcome you to my course. As I mentioned this is on advanced DSC configuration and scenarios. We'll be looking at things such as working with certificates and encryption and setting up pull servers. It should be a very interesting course. Now I'm assuming because this is an advanced course that you have some experience with PowerShell and some fundamental knowledge about DSC. If you are lacking some of these things, there are a number of other courses here at Pluralsight, which you should take a look at. I will be focusing on PowerShell and DSC as it exists in PowerShell version 4. 0. As I'm developing this course PowerShell 5. 0 is available in Windows preview, but things could change. It's really not something you would want to use in a production setting, so I am focusing on DSC as it exists today as something that you would use in a production environment because PowerShell version 4. 0 is what is supported. You can certainly use the material in this course and then take your own steps with PowerShell version 5. 0. There are some new features in 5. 0, but I don't know how they will all settle out, so we're going to focus again on what is currently available in production, and that will be PowerShell version 4. 0.

Deploying an HTTP Pull ServerOnce again, welcome. My name is Jeff Hicks. This is the lesson called deploying an HTTP pull server, and it's part of my Pluralsight course Advanced DSC Configuration. In this module we're going to look at the steps and process and actually deploy an HTTP pull server. Now, if you've been skipping around the course and skipped over lesson two, I'm going to encourage you to go back and watch that because I cover some concepts in that module that I will be referencing in this module. So why would you want to use a web server for a DSC pull server? Well, first of all this is much more friendly when it comes to firewalls. You only have to worry about opening up the port that you specify for your web server, and you can specify the port. You are not limited to using port 80. In fact, most people will use a different port. A web server also gives you the convenience and security of SSL. If you have an internal PKI say from Active Directory, you can issue your own SSL certificate that your clients will automatically trust. So this doesn�t mean you have to go out and purchase a third-party SSL certificate. You can use something that you generate internally. If you use a web server as your pull server, you can also set up a compliance server. This is another web service. You can only use the compliance server, which I'll cover in more detail later in this lesson, with a web-based pull server.